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Thursday, September 6, 2012

Artwork Keepsake Binder

I don't know about you, but my kids love to color. And when I say love, I mean lllllloooooooovvvvvvvvveeeeee to color! We go through coloring books and markers like there is no tomorrow. But you know what? I'm okay with that! I love that they can sit at our kitchen table and giggle together while creating art. I love to see what colors they choose and how they are trying so hard to stay in the lines.... it's wonderful! However, they literally want me to keep every piece of paper they color on. Does this sound familiar to any of you? After their artwork has been on display for a week or two, I try to sneak most of it into the garbage... and I say most because there are a few pieces that I love to look at over and over again, and I want to keep them.

I'm sure there are tons of wwwaaaayyyy more creative ways to store your kids artwork, but since I'm cheap and don't want to put a lot of time into organizing the art and what not, I decided to simply make a folder for each child....

like this...

The reason I came up with a binder was I didn't want their art to be shoved into a box somewhere... and I'm not really good at scrapbooking, and I wanted a little organization. :) Can you blame me? A binder seemed like the perfect solution for me because it was fast, easy, and inexpensive. I simply added their names to their binder, stuck a few sheet protectors in the binder, and got to work.

You see, each sheet protector holds a years worth of art. I simply write the date the art was created, and maybe a little memo about it, and stick it in the sheet protector. The picture below shows a colorful tarantula spider that my 3 year old diligently worked on for a few days, and the rest of her 2012 artwork is in the same sheet protector. When my girls are older and want to look at the book, they can pull out their art and see how it's progressed from year to year. Isn't that lovely? :) Not only do I keep artwork in these, but I also keep little momentos in here (like Mother's Day cards they have written me, etc.).

So far, only one sheet protector has been used because I started it this year. :) And one of these days, I'll get around to labeling each sheet protector with the year... but at least for now, I have a place to store all those precious memories, and I have the date documented.